The timing of the Tampa Bay Times announcement and the 25th anniversary of the final Indy edition was somehow appropriate, the group decided, because the Indy was folded to better position the Times financially for expansion across the bay.

The late Nelson Poynter owned both newspapers, envisioning the competition between them as a way to make each a better paper. Indeed, the Indy’s reporting often set its competitor’s pants on fire.

The slow death of competition in the daily newspaper world has led to a variety of concerns about the future of the industry, and even anti-trust concerns from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The demise of the Indy was 25 years ago and post-Poynter, but it still dismays and rankles the group of reporters, editors and photographers who formed the spirited core of the plucky, award-winning afternoon newspaper.

Many of those in the group gathered at the restaurant on the anniversary, continuing the Indy tradition of family-like unity that has endured for more than a quarter of a century. They brought mementos of the newspaper that meant so much to them and the readers they served (here’s a link that provides more history of the Indy).

The Indy was known as St. Petersburg’s “People Paper,” an intensely local paper famous for its promise to provide a free newspaper after any day when the sun did not shine in the Sunshine City. The paper gave readers stories about people — from the county employee who removed roadkill, to the harbor pilot aboard the ship that hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, to the judge who held a man in contempt for wearing an obscene T-shirt in court.

With compelling stories that entertained, informed and broke news, the Indy was a newspaper whose reporters believed journalism is a sacred trust, a newspaper that won the hearts and earned the loyalty of St. Petersburg readers. I know because I was there. I was an Indy staff writer for 11 years, a career that ended the day of the final edition.

When they pulled the plug on the Indy, a bright light went out in St. Petersburg.

And as of Jan. 1, 2012, for the first time in more than a century, the city will have no newspaper bearing its name.